The Universe has a strange way of throwing our plans off course.
Over the past year, four things in my professional life didn’t exactly go as planned. Most of you already know about one of them. Let's just say That One was harder—is harder—to bounce back from. And that's okay because in the end, it was eventually my decision and choosing the alternative would not have served me or my family.
Since mid-November of last year, I’ve applied for over four-hundred jobs. At this time, I’ve collected over fifty rejections. This means I’ve been ghosted by over three-hundred fifty companies, big and small. Local, regional, and global. And that's okay. But I'm not gonna lie, the first few rejections stung. Then it became sort of a game. A strange game I played alone. “Let’s see how many rejections I can get in one week!” After about twenty rejections, they started to feel like…nothing. “Unfortunately, we chose blah blah blah.”
Yeah, it is unfortunate. For them.
It wasn’t until the middle of May that I decided, if I’m gonna get rejected and ghosted, then I might as well experience those things trying to build my own empire. If you take a look at my podcast feed, you'll see that I kind of already started.
That’s why today, I will officially double down on all of my gifts. And I will advocate for myself and my clients and we will empower one another to make an impact in our respective communities and industries.
The world—especially the corporate world—will no longer dictate my worth to me. I do.
I will take twenty-six years of branding and broadcast experience and flip it on its heels, ushering in a new era of my career. Today, I launch Freddy Cruz Creative Works.
At FCCW, four key principles will guide the day-to-day operations, ensuring the job gets D.O.N.E.
1.) Do your best. Flippancy has no home here.
2.) Own the outcome. As an entrepreneur, the buck stops with me and only me. Period.
3.) Never fear failure. Fearing failure means I'll never be able to do my best because I'm too consumed with all of the "what-ifs."
4.) Embrace the struggle. No matter the result, struggle will always rear its head. Might as well look it in the eye and welcome it to the party.
We get one shot at this game called "life." No more sitting on the sidelines, waiting to work for some company to pick me to play for their team. I have my own team now. And we play hard.